Book Dress Up Day

Those four words can instill great dread into the hearts of many parents. As can World Book Day. It used to with me years ago.

I love the idea of World Book Day and any similar type of days that promote books. However, the added pressure of having to find a suitable dressing up costume can be quite stressful.

When O was at primary school, I was always left scratching my head. Without the wonders of the Internet to help fire my enthusiasm and inspiration, it was tough. We ended up with a couple of costumes that came from shops and my mum made us a couple of things as she is a marvel with a sewing machine. But whenever those words were mentioned I always had a feeling of dread.

Not any more. Maybe the range of book characters has increased, maybe I am more creative, I don’t know. One thing I do know is that there are so many ideas online, there really is no excuse for not having a go at something. Pinterest alone has loads of examples of dressing up ideas and it is so easy to pin ideas for later, which is great if like me, you constantly forget things.

This year, whilst launching a new reading initiative in school, their ‘book day’ was on Friday and at the beginning of the holidays I had a chat with both boys about what they wanted to do. I completely forgot about it until last Friday and I had a small panic and we sat down to see what we needed for both costumes. I had to buy a couple of things which I did from eBay and it didn’t cost a lot of money, I borrowed a couple of things and we made a hat. Job done. Not a huge amount of effort and I spent very little money and the boys were thrilled with their costumes.

L dressed up as Ben from David Walliam’s Gangsta Granny (the bit where they go to steal the crown jewels) and R dressed up as Skullduggery Pleasant.

As always there were some amazing outfits this year running around the playground and some really clever ones; someone had come in a duck outfit with a cardboard truck (Duck in a Truck) another girl had come as Mr Stink. But on a personal level, it was lovely to know that we had created our own outfits this year and both boys were really pleased with their outfits and are already planning next year’s …

Hello

Mother, wife, writer, teacher but not always in that order

I'm Nikki, a former French teacher who is a blogger and freelance writer with a sprinkling of social media on top. I blog pretty much about whatever comes into my head and is a mix of family life, parenting teens tweens and toddlers and general things that I find interesting. My life is full of children, blogging, cooking and learning to be a better photographer and one day I will definitely write that book.